Claimed, gathered and sent

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, August 4 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Luke 2:41-52. This month, all the texts I’ll be preaching from are in the New Testament. Today’s is from the Gospel of Luke. The title is “G is for Growing Up.” And who might we be referring to?  We have, in today’s gospel, our sole encounter and picture of Jesus as a boy, a twelve-year-old boy. Like any boy of that age, he could be precocious and at the same time disobedient. What, you say? Jesus, the Son of God, disobedient? Yup! Joseph and Mary were faithful Jews. They went up to Jerusalem every year for the Passover, one of the pilgrimage feasts. That was no easy feat. Travel was considered dangerous, so people traveled in groups. It would have taken them four or five days to get to Jerusalem from Nazareth (R. Alan Culpepper, Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible). So many days out of one year just for travel time to celebrate this feast. But they were faithful, godly people.  Th...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 28 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Exodus 1:15-22.  P is for Puah. She is one of the two Hebrew midwives mentioned in today’s story in Exodus. “Exodus calls only a handful of women by name: Shiphrah (the other midwife) Yocheved, Zipporah, and Elisheva. But there are other women: Israelite, Egyptian, Amorite, Hittite, Hivite, Perizzite, Jebusite and Canaanite women without whom the story of Exodus…the story of God…our story cannot be told” (Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash).  During that time and throughout much of the time of scripture's writing, women were considered to be nothing. Yet, the names given to the two midwives are significant: Shiphrah means “beauty” and Puah can mean “to gurgle or murmur”- like a baby, (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible). It was clear that these women were well-loved, despite their gender.  Here we have two gutsy gals. Don’t you love the way they go head-to-head with Pharaoh? Altho...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 21 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Genesis 50:15-21. J is for Joseph. Families are complicated. Jacob, Joseph’s father, doted on Joseph. Jacob had a coat of many colors made for Joseph. He was clearly his father’s favorite son. His brothers had reason to be jealous! And Joseph wasn’t perfect, either. He also told them about the dreams he had, showing him in a superior position over them. It is not a smart thing to do. How could Joseph be so forgiving? These are the brothers who threw him into a pit, and sold him to the Egyptians because they were jealous of him.  None of us is perfect. Joseph was forgiving, but first, he put his brothers to the test when they were reunited. He accused them of being spies. He put some of them in prison, as well as testing them in other ways. “It is not until the brothers ‘pass’ all of the tests that Joseph finally breaks down, weeping ‘so loud that the Egyptians heard it,’ and finally...

  This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 14 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church. The text is Genesis 32:24-28.   Jacob was a piece of work. His name means “he cheats” or “he steals.”  At birth, as one of a set of twins, Jacob grasped his brother's heel, hence the name Jacob, which can also be translated as “supplanter.” Throughout their lives, Jacob was always trying to get the upper hand. He even went as far as tricking his father into giving him his brother's blessing, which went to the eldest. Esau was born first and would receive the inheritance, but Jacob wanted it all. As we read throughout Genesis, Jacob's adventures and misadventures should change him, but he is still Jacob—who cheats and steals and is the supplanter—until... this rich story of an encounter with a man. Or is it? Beginning with a puzzle from previous verses: why does Jacob go to all the trouble of crossing the river with his wives and children, only to head back across it to spend the night alon...